Benefits in Britain: separating the facts from the fiction
 

Article on benefits in this country.

LINK

Its quite a long article so I don't expect all to read it but if you do then you will see that 90% of what the government tell us and the Daily Mail publishes is bullsh*t.

Interesting facts for those who CBA to read.

Only 130 families with 10 or more children are claiming benefits in this country.

A high majority of benefits go to working families and pensioners.

Cutting benefits to unemployed does not mean they get jobs.

Thanks for this will have a good looksy tomorrow :D

It was a really interesting read GiRTh, it was good to see some realistic balancing done overall with the benefits facts and figures.

Would make interesting reading for those who only usually quote the right wing reactionary rags.

Even if it was just 1 benefits cheat, it would still be an outrage. The fact is there are people that are STEALING from the tax payers. That is the plain truth. people should be just as upset about benefits cheats as they were about the MP expenses scandal. It's the same thing, stealing from the tax payers.

People have every right to be outraged when they are being stolen from. whether it's 1 person, or 1 million people, it's still stealing, and it's the principle that matters.

This report shows they are not being stolen from by the people the government and daily Mail say.

Which is a bigger outrage - That people work the system to their advantage or that official news papers and Government sources deliberately lie to the public in order to push their agenda and politicise certain events?

In every area of life though, there are frauds and cheats. That will NEVER change. There will never be a system created that means no-one at all can be fraudulent. Its just impossible.

These figures show that fraud is extremely low..thats good enough for me to be honest. Yeah, a few people are claiming stuff they arent entitled to. I'm more concerned about large companies avoiding their tax, and MPs claiming for second homes then selling them on, and banks taking the piss, to be honest. So many people get so worked up over benefit fraud, when its actually a really small amount lost compared to the rest of the corrupt UK.

90% ..... or more ..... :idc:

Anyone can find himself out of a job. It happened to me and i had to claim benefits. I've never felt more worthless. I've worked all my life and i hated being out of work. :(

Yeah, I've been there, too, only to be told that I'm not entitled to benefits since I have savings ..... :shrug:

You must have had a fair amount of savings to not be entitled to anything, I think its something like 16k before you cant get anything :p

And I always thought you could claim contributions based JSA if you had savings..

Its wrong though. Just because you have been sensible shouldnt mean you arent entitled to help if you lose your job. I have this problem with the care home my gran is in..if she hadnt saved all her life she would get care for free..but just because her and my grandad saved, she has to pay £500 per week. Wrong on so many levels.

Omg! That's so wrong! :eek:

The most ridiculous thing is they always seem to concentrate on JSA'ers..when they're hardly a smudge on the benefit system

http://i.imgur.com/dwtf598.jpg

My parent have savings and cuz they live in Jamaica I have access to their bank account for emergencies; when I found my self unemployed I was told this meant I had to live off their savings. I pointed out that technically it wasn't my money and to be honest it felt like stealing and still they weren't interested.

These government departments only have an agenda to reduce the figures they dont care how they do it.

EDIT: Final point off topic, slightly. I was summoned to an interview that was more like an interrogation. The interview was taped and the interviewer went over the questions again and again, over and over making sure every point was explained in full detail. It felt like a police interview TBH . I'd like to see the Daily Mail print articles about how badly people are treated when they are unemployed.

Thats actually terrible..

Not surprising, but terrible.

The system at the moment doesnt really encourage people to save for a rainy day does it...save and you get no help. Enjoy it all (eg blow it all) and you can have help from us. But god forbid you dont jump through our hoops and work for free fulltime for tescos and stuff..or we will leave you totally destitute with nothing at all coming in, despite the law saying a person needs £71 per week to live on. Crazy.

Having been spendthrift in my youth, I grow more miserly with age ..... ;)

Yeah, although I was a career IT specialist and consultant, I was told to apply for 6 jobs (however menial) a week and to actually get one within 12 weeks or my "non-existent" benefit would be stopped ..... :rolleyes:

totally true. Its a strange system when working people get help but unemployed people are told to help themselves.

Who is the Joseph Rowntree Foundation? What information did their researchers access when they published the report that is being claimed to be definitive? How come if something's published in The Guardian, people who tend toward the Left hold it up as fact, while ridiculing the press of the Right?

I'd need to know a bit more about the report and the foundation that put it together before I started claiming it was fact.

I am for once speechless :laugh2:
When addressing the family would say the differing media opinion is due to a mix of politics and sociological perspectives.
Here is some info on what shapes family life,
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publicat...4/04-02/11.htm

And here is some history about Joseph Rowntree a philanthropist who helped to change the social landscape in the UK.
http://www.jrrt.org.uk/sites/jrrt.or...phrowntree.pdf

Yes. I know... I Googled them too. However, I still don't know if their statistics are any more accurate than the government's own. It always seems to me that people are willing to grasp statistics if it fits in with their own ideas.

My local town is an unremarkable little market town with a population of around 7,000. That's 7,000 people from a total of, say, 62 million in the country. I know of four women with no partner in their lives as far as anyone knows, who do not work and who have more than 10 kids. I know this is a fact because they have all used the MP's services to take up cases against various agencies. And yet the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and by extension, the Guardian, is asking me to believe that there are only another 126 families in that position in the remaining 61,999,874 people in the country?

That's a lot of words for someone who's supposed to be speechless.

From my googling I didn't find any political affiliation so I'm not sure why you feel the stats cannot be trusted. They seem just as trustworthy as official stats produced by the government.

I amended my post when I had rescued my jaw from the floor liv.
What is the governments position on this issue then, do their statistics differ wildly from the Rowntree foundations?
The right wing media have never been found to be economical with the truth to influence the electorate have they?